Key to the effort was the response to Kevin Rose, the founder of social network Digg.com. Rose tweeted the Old Spice Man about his own illness that day. Here's the accompanying video response.
Rose was enamored. He tweeted, "Holy sh*t, best get well video EVER from Old Spice." That message went out to his million-plus Twitter followers. A viral phenomenon was born.
The decision to include Rose and the celebrities was no accident. The Wieden team purposefully selected not only persons with huge followings on social networks — followings that dwarfed Old Spice's own — but specifically those with particular credibility and influence over the technorati and social media addicts. The social media kingpins told their followers, their followers told their friends, and the math compounded exponentially, fervently and quickly.
Old Spice's Twitter followers increased more than 1,000 percent. Nearly 600,000 people on Facebook gave its ads a thumbs-up "like it" vote. And, according to Advertising Age, the Old Spice commercials received more than 7 million online views this week alone — and that does not include the viral vignettes we're talking about here.
The cost of media: nothing.
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